EP348 - Jeff & Eric Kidwell Talk AI, Digital Mission, and Killing the Contact Form

All right. Hey, we got um episode 348, the Church Digital Podcast on our way to episode 350 coming up right around the corner. Jeff here, founder of The Church Digital.

It is a very chill July. I shouldn't say chill. It's hotter than garbage down here in Miami. 120% humidity. Uh I'm not sure when I walk out to my car if I'm swimming in the ocean or walking.

It's actually very little difference. Um, the only place worse than Miami would be Houston in America. I can't speak to global. Uh, and so I pity my Houston friends and I've said that online in several meetings recently with some Houston people.

But uh, yeah, listen, it's great having the family around um, and they're hanging out with the wife and kids uh, this summer. Always good to spend time with them.

Uh, but going on vacation next week, so the stream Tuesday is going to get rescheduled. Uh we're going out checking out some colleges in like University of Florida and uh University of Central Florida.

Uh my daughter's getting up to be that point and and so excited to be doing this. We got um a number of people watching online with us right now.

Mr. Pete uh throwing out greetings. Uh I'm no doubt Mr. Pete's probably watching and broadcasting this into um uh big screen. And so excited about that.

Mr. Pete, Mr. Pete, we got to talk touch base here in a little bit on the digital missionary conference. We have four different summits coming up this fall.

The website missionary.digital where we're doing uh starting September 17th. Four different conferences. Um one is uh the first one September 17th, Wednesday. They're all free by the way.

First one September 17th, digital neighborhoods. What's it look like to be on mission in uh digital platforms in these digital neighborhoods that exist? We're going to talk a lot about church planting as well.

Digital church planting in the September 17th one. September 24th is is going to be uh control alt recover. We're doing a summit on uh Christ center recovery uh October 1st, Wednesday, October 1st, O dark 30 uh because we're going to be doing a conference in European time zones.

Uh we're doing the European digital missionary conference. Excited to see that happening. And then October 8th is going to be uh the digital missionary gaming summit.

So like I said, there's a lot coming up right around the corner. Check that out. We've also got EDM equipping digital missionaries. The new one is kicking off here in in a couple weeks.

Going to talk more about that when I get back from vacation. But hey, heads up like it's the church digital man. They ain't no slowing down.

Even in summertime, it's kicking up and going. Flat cap knows that. Uh person turquoise waving two times. Um flat cap, for love of all that's good in the world, why can we not figure out how to get your emojis transferred over?

Like I don't I don't understand. Mr. Pete is in big screen. Mr. Pete, I want you to help me figure out how to broadcast the church uh the digital missionary conferences in the big screen.

Let's touch base on that and uh let's coordinate in advance uh on that. So, we'll have to get with Andy and loop that in.

But excited uh to do some things in in big screen and beyond coming up here in the fall because virtual reality is a thing.

And so, moving on, I what's also a thing is evidently artificial intelligence is is a thing. I'm a I myself I am It's interesting.

I said into WhatsApp today like uh I'm I'm a chat GPT guy and um Google Gemini, but I'm also Google Workspace. Like I I live in Google Docs, Gmail, Chrome, web browser, like that that's that's my jam all day long.

Google spreadsheets, Google Google. But I I I really don't like Gemini. And I started like trying to figure out. So I said it in WhatsApp.

Somebody convinced me to to abandon chat GPT and jump on Gemini. and people came out of the woodwork. Evidently, everybody loves Gemini and uh chat GPT is old school.

Who knew? But like I said, AI is definitely a thing. A and uh which actually coincided real well into this conversation that we're having today.

I'm excited to bring into the conversation Eric Kidwell um founder, visionary leader, the brains behind live ai.co. Eric, thanks for jumping on the stream with us today.

Yeah, glad to be here. As uh one of my pastor friends used to say, just call me anything but late for dinner. And so, yeah, I'm excited just to be here hanging out with you all today and yeah, talking about AI.

Don't call me late for dinner. That That's cool. What is I'm I'm curious. What is Let's get into like what is live AI?

But but before that, like what what is your actual title? like tell tell us your story and and how you got to the point of of live AI.

Yeah, I love that. Appreciate you asking that question. Um, so a little bit of history. So, like this starting live AI comes from the fact that I really wanted to help the church innovate because um if anybody's ever worked at a church, work with churches or even just like a lay leader elder at a church, they know that sometimes churches can move, you know, at a slow pace when it comes to like innovating and uh you know, and thinking about how we can really uh utilize the tools that we already have to reach this next generation.

And so, um, I've been a pastor for more than 14 years. And I about COVID season, my heart really just broke because we had, you know, a pandemic hit us and it really impacted churches in a big humongous way.

But, um, my heart really broke for the church because of the fact that, uh, I knew a lot of them were going to shutter their doors.

I knew um more than just my heartbreaking for pastors and churches, but was my heartbreaking for the people that were going to lose connection with their church because they just were going to get out of the habit of going to church.

And so because uh my church uh and the and the senior leadership there and the board like um trusted me and trusted what we could do with technology, we were like eight years ahead of the game.

So, we were ready with with an online ministry and and it was um I remember my first email to my to my senior pastor and it said uh like it was I think it was Friday the 13th when when they kind of called the pandemic and the national shutdown and I and I my subject was how we're going to grow.

Yeah. um in the pandemic and we actually did we we grew in attendance and uh and just we saw a lot God do a lot of great things and but even in that God really started to plant the seed in my heart of hey Eric maybe I didn't call you just to help just this one church innovate and maybe I want to expand the the fact that maybe I've called you to help a c the capital C church to innovate and so um AI is one of those tools uh and there's other things that you know is coming down the pipe But yeah, I just started thinking about man, how can I use technology to to and AI to innovate and help churches innovate and uh and that kind of really just all started there.

So my title is founder um and uh you know maybe in the future as things kind of progress and and that kind of stuff we'll I I'll figure out what that actually means.

Maybe I'll find out what founder means. Um but um but yeah, so that's uh that's kind of the heart behind it. And really my my heart, my passion ultimately is more than just helping pastors, you know, focus on the two B's.

Like it's the bucks and the buckets and it's the butts and the seats. I really have a strong passion to help churches to uh create a space where people can be connected with their church and with each other more than just that one hour on Sunday cuz they're on these other things.

Tik Tok, you know, YouTube, you're watching right now. Nothing against y'all watching on on these live stream places, but how can we help you be more integrated in and and and doing life with one another um in a digital space?

And so I love I love what what you're doing, Jeff, and I love what what what your volunteers and the people on your team are doing because uh like I just get goosebumps just thinking about how uh we are in different kind of ways really trying to tackle this problem of helping churches to to reach people um 247 the 167, you know, as I've heard people say, uh the other 167 hours of the week. So, yeah.

So, excited to be here. Excited to talk with you guys today and hang out with you.

Definitely love it. Um, and it's it's exciting. Listen, I I'm excited about anybody that's trying to to help the church move beyond the one hour on Sunday and utilizing digital tools, utilizing artificial intelligence, utilizing technology to to bridge the gap and connect people at at a deeper level, even even physically or digitally, digitally, hybrid, whatever the the the label you want to put on it, but the idea of of using digital uh to connect people easier and and that's one of the things that that I love.

Um, what I've seen about live AI is the ability uh for it to connect with people and and draw them into uh into the conversation into the ministry to to connect with them at at a deeper level even as as artificial intelligence.

So maybe te tell me a little bit what exactly tell the audience what exactly does live AI do?

Yeah. So, Live AI, what it does is it takes your website, which we've all talked about for many, many years, that like your website's the front door of your ministry.

The website's the front door of your ministry. What it does, Live AI, is it takes that front door and it actually puts a door greeter at the front of it.

um an AI that is is trained on on your voice, your the way that you word things, um your beliefs, your information, your service times, but even just like uh primarily it just helps people get connected at 24/7 um because uh you know I always just think about that person who's just struggling.

Maybe they googled some kind of thing and sorry my my Google right now is turning on because it thinks I'm trying to talk to it.

I'm going to unplug it. Um, Google is listening to me.

Google, shut up.

Yeah, exactly. Quit listening. Um, maybe they're googling at 2 a.m.

like on a on a Friday night or Saturday night and somehow they land on your church's website and and oftentimes all we have for them is, "Hey, join us on Sunday." Um, but what if they could feel like there is a like a personal presence that's right there live AI where they can chat where they can kind of wrestle with some things, ask some questions, some logistical things like maybe does your church have like a like a way of transportation?

Can I get can you do you have a shuttle kind of thing. Well, live AI can feel all those questions and more to nurture them to take that first step of whatever that next step is.

Whether that's watching online or coming in person or maybe there's a person that's already been coming to your church for a while. Maybe their next step is to join a life group or or even maybe just to um to start giving and they've never gave before.

And so in a nutshell, that's what we do is we put a a door greeter. You know, pastors wouldn't put a in ministries like ministries, if you had a table at like a conference, you wouldn't just have like just like a table that has just like brochures sitting out.

That's what websites are really. There's like static online brochures that we hope somebody out there will hear. It's like a message in a bottle, but we can actually have a presence there.

Um that's that is a great and amazing representative of your ministry. Um and also businesses um businesses are using this too, but uh but it can be there and it can represent you well to help you to help turn people into to take their next steps.

Yeah. So I love this. So years ago, I and this is if I put a date on it, 2015. And this was bad 2016.

And this was, this was maybe too early for this, but I, I the church I was at, we we put the little, you know, uh it was, it was not um Intercom IO, but it was like an intercom like platform. I think it was called liveperson.com. And and we had like half a dozen people that had the app on their phone. And when everybody, when anybody and a user went and clicked on the little thing in the lower right hand corner of the screen, screen would pop up and like we would interact with people in live time and and so like I scheduled I think I had a volunteer team of twenty plus people. It was funny, my mom was actually one of them and trained her on how to like, you know, when when it vibrated, like she would interact and so she would type in and and have the conversation or try to have the conversation. But what you've done essentially is is you've taken like at the base level AI and now used it to have that conversation to engage with people and and draw them deeper into the ministry. Like, am I understanding that correctly?

One hundred percent. Yeah, AI first. Cuz this really why I, there's a lot of things I could have built with AI, but I really when I looked at the marketplace and saw how they had all these like chat widgets, I'm like, um, why are why are they doing community better than us than churches? Because we were literally the ones that invented community in the first place. And when I see like a a chat, what I see is an organization that really cares about community. And and so when I first built it, I was like, "Okay, this is going to be an AI first company that does exactly what you said." But I want to highlight, I think another thing that I think is so important for people to hear is that at the right times though, AI is not meant to mean that there's less of you for your ministry. My my big belief is that we should use AI so that we can have more of us for our ministry.

And so at the right times in the conversation, we've actually fine-tuned this to where AI will actually point people to have the next conversation with the pastor of like, hey, actually, yeah, we'd love to pray for you. Would you like a pastor to pray for you with that? You know, click this button and uh we'll let them know. And so either it can take messages for you and connect them offline through like email or um we actually built this in um uh afterwards, but now you can not just have an AI conversation, but you can actually say, "Can I chat with a pastor right now?" And if a pastor is available, they can actually live chat with the pastor from there.

But the AI handles all the beginnings of it. And you know, at the end of the day, I know pastors and they're just trying to get to the next Sunday oftentimes in ministries, they're so busy with with with that. So having time to actually have live chats all the time is is oftentimes um you know, really really difficult. And so having an the AI that's a great representative ambassador even of your ministry uh and then let them choose when the right times is to have that that deeper conversation has been a game changer for ministries.

Yeah. Yeah. I could see where where churches would be and and you know there's a lot of digital missionaries and others in here and I want to get to one of the questions some of the questions in here but I could see where um it would churches would be challenged. Okay. Well, you're replacing people. Um, machines are having conversations, but the way that you're describing it, it's it's almost like it it's the AI is more of a of a traffic cop. It navigates the the the safe conversations. And when it gets to, hey, I I want to have I'm having a serious issue. I need to pray with someone. I need to talk with someone. Like, there's ways to structure it in such a way that it hands it off to to the person. So it's it's you know a a a relational kind of stop gap to pull people deeper into the conversation.

Um one hundred percent.

Are are like talk to me about the church because like I said I that's AI is a controversial thing inside the church. So lot some people are going to buy into it some are not. What's the mindset of the people that are buying into it? Like let's let's keep it positive. What are they seeing? Uh and what are they experiencing? what's the benefit uh by going down this road and and um and being positive with AI in this context.

So I think the main people that are are the most excited and I can also talk about the people who have apprehensions and I think and I think it's I think it's good to have apprehensions because especially with new technology you want to make sure that you're asking the right questions but let's talk about the the people who jump on it and then the others who eventually realize okay yeah this is this is really great is that they love the idea of being able to be represented twenty-four seven um in their voice. It's almost like they like I don't know if you ever asked this or thought this question, but it's like you ever just sit there and you're like you're at your desk or you're somewhere and you're like you're just wishing like I wish I had another me. Another me that could like either just handle these emails or have these conversations, you know, with with my team or my elders. I need to have like a meeting with them or um it's it's kind of like that but it's with guard rails, right? Because like you said, it's like a traffic cop in a sense of like knowing uh, and it's all baked in and they don't have to have it. They don't have to try to create this from scratch already. Like this works with just by putting in your church or ministry website. AI goes there. It learns all this stuff. And so like it can know like this is a slower conversation. I can kind of answer some of this stuff. But then there's also times when it's like if someone's saying I'm having mental issues. The AI like what do they say? Monopoly like you know don't pass go like go directly. Like the AI automatically points them to resources like hey actually um call call someone right now. First of all, you're not alone, but here's this number. Call nine eight eight or go to, you know, the suicide helpline and they would love to help walk you through this. So, like being able to kind of know those kind of designated reporters even situations that this is not a situation that we want any time to kind of pass through where this person who's in urgent need right now gets the help that they need. Um, the AI has been tuned to kind of um look out for those things.

So, I'd say the the people that love it love the fact that it's uh that it's that and also um there's ways that that they can try it out internally to like see how it's been trained. Ask questions, red team it. I'm always a big fan of like having your team just kind of go in there and try asking questions that people would ask when they're on your website and then try it. Just try it out for for half a month or we have a free trial where you can try out for thirty days. No credit card required. You just put it on there and just see see what it does. Um and uh and we have we've had very little people stop using it. Usually the reason why pops people stop using it, I had one ministry stop just because of the fact that they stopped being a ministry. They they felt like God was calling to do other things. And so, um, so I'd say that's the main thing, just being able to be represented and just knowing the fact that, um, AI can really help build these, um, and nurture these relationships to a place where people want to take those next steps.

And so for the people with apprehension, I'd say, you know, those are the ones who are like, is it going to is it going to answer like a question weird? And that's one of the very first things that challenges that we that we tackled and and one of the reasons why people love live AI, the people who jump on it right away. It's because if you ask a question to your to your live AI and it doesn't know the answer, it's not going to make up something. It's not going to be like, oh yeah, like we've got totally got a shuttle, you know. Um uh but it says, "I'm sorry I don't have information about that." You can actually customize that response. So the guy could say, "I'm sorry I don't have information on that. I'm still learning, but if you want to learn more, just call this number or email us at at this email and we'd be glad to to answer that for you. And so the AI gets smarter as it goes.

Yeah, I would imagine the making up facts is is kind of scary.

Um, it could be. Um, we've got Flat Cap asking the question, is this just for websites? like in his context is uh he's doing a lot of work and and a lot of our people are doing digital missionary work in like Discord and and so um an API hookup to get into this. I I don't want to get too technical with you. I know you're the the visionary guy, but um have you thought about integrating this into an API to integrate this into other platforms away from just a web browser?

One hundred percent. So, I have such a heart for for not only just like digital um uh expressions of of the church, but also for um the the ministries all over the globe. And what I've been hearing a lot is also just like how a lot of missions and a lot of ministries are done over WhatsApp even. And so, um so I'll say this. So, right now, um the the bottom line is currently we are focused just just on websites. However, if anybody out there wants to help us be part of um uh like beta testing APIs and those kind of things with Discord where or even like a texting number, we in the long run want to be able to kind of unleash your AI to not just have conversations on your website, but everywhere. Imagine being able to email the church email, the general church email, and the AI would field a lot of that right off the bat. If it doesn't know the answer, then it points it to the right person to ask that. or having a texting number or Discord or WhatsApp. So, we want to be multi-channel and even like Facebook um plugging into your that first response would come from not like a a generic, you know, Facebook response, but it's trained on your information, on your heart, on your values, on your beliefs. And um so yeah, so if you are interested in helping us um maybe beta testing some of that, I would love to to work with ministries and uh and people that would be excited about helping us test that out.

Well, shoot, I'll do that myself. Um yeah, like I would love um and we can offline this, but to figure out the AI uh the API level of this so it can be integrated into like you said two of my favorite words uh WhatsApp and Discord. Uh oh, you know, WhatsApp's WhatsApp's filled with spam and so we're working through that, but WhatsApp and Discord a a lot of that uh you know, we've we've got uh we got uh Mr. Pete's uh working in in virtual reality and there's some opportunities there maybe to look through, but uh I you know, I guarantee Discord's got the API side to open up to integrate in. Uh and so yeah, I'd love to to do that or maybe even fund some of the experiments we can we can get there. There are plenty of people that would benefit from this that that we if we could navigate through and and open it up outside of the website. Websites website is crucial um for for some ministries um you know and some of our ministries have have moved beyond that um as a primary focus and so that's some of what we're we're we're fishing on here. So that's beautiful. We can live too, right?

I'm sorry.

Like one of the hardest live streams too, just to put this out there, like one of the biggest challenges I find ministries have is how do we make sure that we have someone that can feel the questions and stuff? How do we make sure we have enough volunteers? Some a lot of ministries are just turning off their live stream chat because they don't have someone to be able to manage it.

Imagine if you had someone that could, you know, listen to the live stream live, feel like a YouTube, and then being able to kind of like post different kind of things, comments, but then answer people's questions and just comment and engage with people. Um, would be just like I think another just application that we're really um would love to to partner with different ministries to help us, you know, test that and and uh try it out.

Yeah. I mean, we're we're a we're a beta house here. Uh, so we we love to experiment and try different things. So I'm sure we can have those conversations and and and figure it out. We just got to work with the the tech stack to to get there. Um, what's the it's it's it's funny like even even talking about so if you're you're challenging me with what you just said like I'm I want to I want to call this out. I want to dialogue through it. So I you would tell me hey um like there's an opportunity to integrate live stream into artificial uh artificial intelligence in the live stream to do chat and actually I have heard some people have experimented with that historically now now what I would have said before this conversation and I'm open to being trained differently is hey don't live stream any service don't you know unless you have the ability to interact with the chat that in real time because otherwise you're just broadcasting noise. You're creating consumers. The interaction, the dialogue is is through that. And so like historically, I've said it's got to be about people. It's got to be about people. We need the chat host. We need the and when I was doing the physical church stuff, like I had twenty, thirty, forty people that were my chat hosts and I'd schedule them and they'd show up and they they do all the all the all the stuff. Now you're talking about AI not replacing a person maybe multiplying opportunities.

What's I I just would love your take on this question. What's the role of AI and what's the role of people in in this this interaction balance because you're you're inserting AI into places where yes it's helpful, yes it's challenging. What's the balance between the the two there?

Yeah. So I think at the end of the day um just because we can do something doesn't necessarily mean that we should and so it definitely should be um and as a once person once told me and I even actually his name was Jeff by the way everyone watching at home don't build anything until you need it. Um but also make sure that if you're building something make sure it actually has a reasoning and some why behind it. So, but to answer your question, I think the key thing is I just want to interrupt one second. Actually, if you zoom in on this sticky that was on my desk, don't build anything until you need it. Honest to God, it was just sitting there. Uh, not a guy named Jeff told me. Somebody else, but go ahead, continue. I'm just saying. Go ahead, please.

Passing wisdom from we're paying it forward. Someone will now, you know, maybe reference this this podcast in the future, this live stream. So, um, I think if anybody else listening to this is wrestling with the same question, like, how in the world would I even think about trying to use AI to be a part of maybe my live stream, because I'm a I'm a one hundred percent believer of the same thing, Jeff, that if you're going to do a live stream, let's make sure that we have people that are there that can connect with them right then and there. Um, and so, so I think of this in in two ways. One we can have we can think about it from the the from two major pain points and I think both of this would have to base would still need to be um you know ask people who are attending church both people who uh who watch online primarily or people who've never watched online before and they're totally new um is uh and get their feedback is is two scenarios that I can think of that are the main ways that AI can help.

So, number one would be making sure that the chat isn't a ghost town and making sure that it feels alive and it's not just one person posting, but it feels like it's it's more of a conversation because I know there's a lot of live streams that feel like, okay, man, I just feel like I'm just the same one just posting the same thing, but you can make it more of a conversation where it feels like it's like the organization's AI is replying into the thing and also just kind of asking like just questions that people can reply to. So, that's that's one, but engaging with people too and helping um them. And so this dub tales into the the the next biggest problem that I think that can be solved with AI is it's uh the opposite problem. Maybe you have so many people that are chatting that the people that are in there can't possibly get to every single person, make them feel like they're they're um seen, known, and heard um and loved. And so I think AI can really help with that too of like helping to kind of surface up the most um pressing needs that a person a live person could kind of um by pattern recognizing and saying okay these are the top five conversations you should really focus on. I'll handle the rest and um and and and you can then just tee it off. Just picture it like the AI it is like you know if you ever played tee ball the AI is just like okay let me just tee this off for you. Put a little T right here. Boom. It's ready to go. And then you just hit a home run. Maybe even have an AI to help um craft and point to like scriptures of like, hey, this should be a scripture, a good scripture like almost like co-pilot of like like imagine if we all had like you ever seen that one movie with Will Smith where I think it's um he's like in someone's ear and he's like helping them like through like dating. Um, you know, we could even consider like how could AI maybe not so much necessarily be in the chat as much, but just kind of help the people who are there have come up with a conversation, ask a question or say, "Oh, this is, you know, this ties to this scripture or by or even like, hey, by the way, since this live AI has access to all your your other your other parts of your website, but also your sermons, the I could be like, hey, um, this is like a little bit of that sermon that was preached um, four months ago by this other pastor. If you want to learn more about what's the next step of learning how to trust God and steward your finances, check out this. So, so I know that's um a lot of that is kind of like, oh man, there seems like a lot of what ifs between now and there, but I'd say it always starts with like what would be the main problems we would want AI to solve? And we've kind of really I maybe uncovered uncovered like a third one, but it's like let's make sure it's not a ghost town. Um, second one would be if it feels like it's a lot going on, let's have AI help kind of uh um make sure everyone's feels feels seen and heard. And then the third one thing it would be like, hey, maybe an AI could help um the volunteers to ask really great questions and not necessarily um have the conversations for them.

Yeah.

But maybe they it just kind of helps coaching.

So, yeah.

Yeah. No, I I I love that. Uh it's it's it's critical mass. Uh it's uh it's traffic hot bringing to the to the attention and and then it's it's it's some coaching and and you know Steve Steve's jumping in. Steve's a friend brother from another mother. AI can assist with live stream but not replace live people. Uh beginning to think that that that's true everywhere. And and that's you know to to be like Steve that's that's my vantage point is is I love I love the idea of and I use the term traffic cop but I mean essentially that's that's what I I think it it excels at. I think it excels at at at a traffic cop. Hey, um you you're you're going through the situation. Uh would you like to talk to someone or here's resources and it's and it's smart enough in in a relational dialogue tone to to have that that conversation and and to and to point people in in the right direction. And if that means having a conversation with a with a a pastor or a volunteer full of love, all that's good in the world, yes, let's do that. If if that means getting connected to more resources to allow the person to um uh to dig in deeper. I'm guessing there's some sort of log or some sort of report in your system that you can see how where people are going and and and and what they're doing.

Yeah. And the questions that they're asking and how they're being helped. Yeah. You can you can see all that. I call that you can see the quantitative like the numbers but you can also see the qualitative which is what are those questions that that people are asking it's and um yeah it's it's it's deeper than just kind of looking at a Google analytics of like looking at what pages people visit. This this is like actual conversations and questions that they're wrestling with.

Yeah. So there there's plenty of opportunity. The thing that I love about AI is is it I I'd love to see AI multiply people's efforts. And and so if if I can use AI to to drive to a video sermon or to drive people to a web page or to draw attention when people are looking and and can't find, I think that's it's a huge opportunity. And and if it can be the operator to help people navigate uh to to to help users navigate to get to the right person, I think it's a huge win.

Well, you've got a a demo set up, right? Can we like click through and and and see some of that?

Let me uh let me put you up here on the screen.

All right, go for it.

Yeah. So, I had a pastor actually give me a suggestion. He said, "Hey, you should create like a dummy church website." And so, I you're not calling churches dummies.

This is a nonexistent church.

Not a real church.

Okay. And my wife kind of gave me a little bit of flack that you know, you know, we're even have like a backstory of like the leadership of how Carrie and I started this church. So, this is not a real church. Anybody that's watching this, this is just uh a way to kind of see like on um on like a church website how this could work. So, I'll refresh it so you all can see this. Um, and uh, and as we get ready to kind of see this load, too, I'll say too that even just this idea of how how some a live AI AI could work inside of a live stream, we could also train it to not do certain things at certain times, like only when the when the volume of the chat reaches like this many chats per minute, that's when you want the AI to come in. So, there's this there's a whole lot of um there's a whole lot of stuff that we can do.

Yeah. So, as you can see, as we talked about earlier, like Live AI is like if your website's the front door of your your digital ministry, um, and your ministry in general, Live AI is the door greeter. So, after a few moments of coming on to your website, you're going to see this but this little, um, um, you know, button down there, this message chat, and then after a few seconds, it welcomes them. Says it makes you feels like, okay, there's there's a presence here. Hey, welcome to live church. We're glad that you're, you know, we're here to help you find hope and healing. And after a few more moments, it gives some like conversation starters or what we call engagement buttons. And so I can click into this and just, you know, ask things like, um, you know, hey, when is service time? Um, what are some other questions, Jeff, that that people might ask when they come to a church website?

Uh, what do I wear? What's for the kids?

Um, where do I park? A four and a seven year old. Any tips for a newcomer and all this, by the way, is is initially coming from your website. So, check this out. This is this is live. Like, I don't have someone like Wizard of Oz, you know, giving these answers cuz no one could type that fast.

Anyways, this is AI trained on your voice. Come as you are. I love that. You'll see people in everything from jeans to dresses. We care about you, know about what you wear.

I love that. So for your kids, we have fantastic children's ministry with age appropriate classes, activities that they'll love to make your visit smoother.

You might want to plan a visit. So not only did it like answer the question, but it also surfaced up one of those, um, call to actions, one of those engagement buttons.

So I can be like, "Yeah, you know what? I am ready to plan a visit, you know, because this, this, um, conversation feels warm." And I'm ready to do that.

So I can go in here and just type in my name, you know, my email. Yeah. And all that. So yeah, that's, um. Beautiful.

How does, yeah, don't type your phone number. I don't want random people calling you because of YouTube. Um, how would it handle like a more difficult situation like, uh, I lost my job. I need help.

Um, yeah, let's, let's put that. Yeah, put my, put my phone number. Let's, let's do that. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine.

Yeah, that's funny. Um, yeah, let's try that. So let's, um, let's see how the AI responds. So I'm going to tell you right now, the AI is going to respond in one of two ways. It's either going to say, "I'm sorry, I don't have information about that," or it's going to point them to resources. So let's see. So, hey, like I, um, I have lost my job. How did you word that?

Uh, I lost my job and I'm struggling right now.

Yeah. So great. First of all, it's just empathizing. Sorry if you're feeling that way. Please know you're not alone. There are people who care about you and want to help. You can call National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 988 and they're available to help you 24/7.

So we've trained the AI that if someone kind of says some of these trigger words like struggling, yeah, yeah, that we, we, we really wrestled with how much more do we have, can I ask and have conversation with them before we try to send them to this, but if they, yeah, say some of those buzzwords, we want to send them there like right away. And I think I'd love to also show this to you too. I'll show like another ministry here, um, called called Northside. And, uh, like if you ask a question that the AI doesn't know, it'll actually surface that up in, in its brain. Um, and so actually I'll ask it here. So I ask, I'll ask a question like, "What is Jeff's favorite, um, I'm just going to leave the typo in there because I love how the AI is not going to judge me." By the way, what is Jeff's favorite food?

Um, black coffee and sushi, not at the same time.

Say, so is it black coffee and sushi? So the AI obviously, because the AI doesn't know about Jeff's eating habits. Yeah. Yeah. And so we can come over here, church. Um, let's see. Live church. And we're going to log in. Um, here's where the demos typically break down because you're logged into like 19 accounts at the same time. So we'll have to see how good you are.

Let's see. This is where the rubber meets the road. Um, I, and for some odd reason, my, um, uh, my password, uh, filler upper thing is not coming in. Um, so but that's cool. I can actually, I came a little bit prepared and I've got these copied and pasted over because who has time to remember all these passwords anymore, right? I mean, unless you're doing the non-safe way, which is, uh, I'm just going to try to use the same password for everything. By the way, highly do not, do not recommend that.

Um, live church. Boom. Let's copy over this here. And then I'm going to show you all what happened on the back end when someone asked a question that the AI. Yeah.

So we can come back over here. And by the way, this is what it looks like when you log in to see like the quantitative.

Yeah. And so we're going to come to Q&A. And you can see the AI surfaced this question that it didn't know how to answer. And so we can either delete it because maybe we don't want the AI to ever answer that question. But if we wanted to, we can say, all right. Yeah. Um, you said sushi and.

Black coffee.

Black coffee. And so I'm going to leave the typo in there by the way too. And we can see how, okay, that's been added. And so live in real time, I can ask that same question. I can actually ask in a different way like favorite foods. Does Jeff have any?

And so the AI gets smarter as it goes by answering these questions that maybe we, we weren't thinking about. And so look, um, it even.

It fixed the typo.

Yeah. Made sure I didn't have the typo. Favorite food is sushi. Black coffee. Though not necessarily at the same time. Even rewarded it a little bit.

Yeah.

So if you have any questions, feel free to ask.

I, I pity your church website for knowing that I like sushi.

There's got to be more important things than sushi. Um.

There are a whole lot more.

No, very, very.

Breaking bread. There's something about breaking bread with each other. But, uh, so yeah, so that's, um, that's, that's basically the gist of it. And it's like I said, super easy. I tell pastors if they can copy and paste, they can have the, uh, an AI on their website in five minutes because basically you just go to our website, livei.co, um, sign up, give it to your website, the AI goes to your website, learns to know all there is, you know, to know all about you, and then you just come over here, you copy this code, put on your website, and you now have 24/7, um, you know, presence on your website.

Yeah. So this is, so basically the source documents, uh, is, is the church website. Is there an opportunity to upload PDFs, videos, other material like if you had a sermon, uh, embedded on a web page? Is it scanned? Like what, what other types of material does your, your AI process?

Yeah. Um, great question. So currently the two primary ways are through your website, off of the top. The second way is you can come in here to where it says Q&A and you can add questions, what questions someone might have and the answer.

Um, and so we don't have yet, but very, very, very soon I believe is we're going to have ways where you can upload PDFs, you can sign in with your YouTube, you can do that kind of thing, but until then it's a little bit more manual.

And I'm a big, big believer, how do we remove obstacles so pastors can get back to what they do best, which is minister to people and do less busy work and backend work.

Um, but if someone wanted to basically do that, all they'd have to do is go to their YouTube, copy the, copy the transcript or even like their sermon, just copy their sermon notes, come in here and just put questions like what was the sermon about and then just go ahead and just paste the sermon transcript and then outline and then boom, the AI can have, you know, answer questions. Same thing with PDFs. Just go to PDF, just copy it, and then come over here and just paste it, and then the AI can answer any of the questions that might be inside of those documents, like, you know, um, discipleship resources, or maybe you have like a, like a resource that's like, hey, this is discipleship 101, and you can take that PDF and upload it in here, and your AI can help point people to that.

And so if someone's like, hey, do you have, what's your beliefs on like if I should get baptized? And be like, yeah, you should do baptized. Actually, you should join our, our next discipleship class where we're going to go over this resource that you just read. Um, and so, uh, so yeah, so, um, very soon we're going to be able to do train on other things, but, but right now we're just focused on how do we make it the easiest possible.

Love it. Can you have multiple AI implementations on, unlike, you know, maybe on, on the small groups page, specific to that, like an AI specific to that small group or a web page specific to a curriculum that you have, it kind of processing through, or is it just one implementation across the entire website?

Yeah. So it is, um, it's typically done in one implementation across the website. The only reason why you would maybe want to have, um, let's say, uh, uh, maybe one implementation on another, and we can actually do that by the way. All we, um, someone would just ask us and we would help them to where we'd have the AI with, um, with those different implementations.

But the main reason maybe why you would have on separate ones is because maybe you want to have, um, maybe you don't want to really want to have plan of visit on the small groups page because it's more geared towards helping someone kind of get plugged into a small group or small group questions.

Um, and so we can definitely help, help people set that up. But I'll show you something too. And, um, uh, we're actually, uh, we're beta testing this to where people can not just have like a live chat on their website in the bottom corner, but we're coming after contact forms.

All right, so contact forms, your days are numbered. Gone will be the days of like having to see, I don't know if y'all about y'all, but when I see like a contact form in seven fields, it's like I don't want to fill that out.

And so, uh, um, so we've created another way where people can basically embed the live AI on a website, maybe put it next to a sermon or maybe put it next to some kind of resource on their page and it could say something like, "Hey, I have more questions and you know, got more questions about about us, ask them here." And maybe we don't all these want all these buttons here. We just want to just be a clean conversation. Just focus on that one thing with one prompting.

Yeah. Um, uh, we can definitely do that. And, uh, this is one of the ways that we're helping churches to do that.

So as you're killing the form, the data ends up going to, uh, an email to a database to, uh, to your back end where it's processed.

Yep. Okay. Yeah. All the above backend where it's processed, but then also, um, email notifications.

Okay. Cool. Cool. And with you know even down the road integrating into like a CRM, you know, a database, something like that, be really cool. Um, so it's, it's a seamless thing. Um, but I know I love it. I, I, I love the road that you're on. How, how long has, um, how long has this existed?

Uh, one, uh, I'm sorry, Live AI.

So we were, we, we did an alpha, um, on Thanksgiving. And so one of the, I told my team I was like, "You guys gave me a really great reason to be thankful today because we were, we went, um, we had an alpha on, on Thanksgiving and then we went, um, uh, beta on, on Easter. And so we are, uh, basically publicly now launch."

Yeah. So yeah.

Wow.

So really new. And so really we're, we're also a team that really loves feedback. So anybody that's using it wants to give us, we especially love people who in our, uh, our, our back end come in here and, and go to the support tab and give us like ideas for feature requests, any kind of issues they, they're seeing. Um, because, uh, at the end of the day, um, I remind my team on this a regular basis, but like this is not a dictatorship. This is a democracy and the way votes are cast is by how users and people who who use Live AI and the feedback that they get. Votes are cast by dollars. Let's see what the users want and give it to them.

That's awesome. Uh, man, this is, this is, this is exciting. What, um, and so like you're, you're in beta. You're four, six months in. You've, you've been doing this.

Less than a year having a viable product that that's out there.

Um.

50 organizations using it. 50,000 messages already sent.

Yeah.

Wow. 50,000 in, in, in, I mean, five months or so. Um, what is the, what do you, what are you going to look like? You know, it was funny offline we were talking about, uh, EOS and, and, uh, VTOs and goals and things like that.

So what do you look like in five years? Great question. I think in five years, my hope is that the church at large views Live AI as the trusted AI layer in their ministry because it's going to happen just like we integrated different kinds of technologies into ministry. We're going to figure out how to really be at the forefront where churches and ministries can really trust that the way that we're thinking about AI with the guardrails and what we can do with it, what we won't do with it, has been really thought out well. And that they just trust that the AI is going to be a good representative of and also help them figure out other things.

So like in five years, my also hopes is I want to not just help churches on the front door of the ministry, but I also want to help them slow down the revolving back door of helping them figure out when different people might be disengaging from the ministry. Because you know, just like in a live chat if there's a bunch of conversations happening and a person that's able to get to all those, a big church one of their biggest problems is how do we still remain small? I want to help small churches be able to identify lay leaders to help them do the work of the ministry. And then for big churches, I want to help them remain small and help them realize here's a group of people where if you just had your kids pastor call them up and say, hey, I noticed that you haven't been here for a couple weeks, just want to give you a call and see how things are going. They might find out that they didn't come because they had some kind of problem or were offended because of the kids ministry, but it might just be because they had to start taking care of their aging parents. And just because they gave a call, they stopped them from disengaging from the church.

So I have a really big heart for two things. I tell you two things that drive me is I want to make sure that people don't fall through the cracks, number one. And then number two, because I was a teenager who joined a church and a pastor saw me and believed in me and took me under his wing, I really want to help pastors to do that because a lot of times pastors feel like, especially if you're one hundred and under, you feel like you have to do everything all yourself. So I want to help them to multiply what they're doing by being able to tap on those underutilized resources in their church to help them do the work.

That's a great point. Of your fifty some clients, I was funny, I was making an assumption that big churches are more likely to use your tool. What are you seeing? Like what's your average customer church persona right now? Yeah, it's the whole thing. We have maybe ten to twenty-five percent that are zero to one hundred. We have another maybe twenty percent that are one hundred to two hundred fifty. We've got a significant number that's less than two hundred fifty. You know, low numbers, what you just said would be twenty-five percent. So but just a significant like, and I love the fact, you know, a small church is going to appreciate the multiplication aspect of this, that they're using a traffic cop to communicate and get the appropriate information to the appropriate people at the appropriate time. And so I love the fact that some small churches are even exploring this. There's benefit to big churches, but you know, I could see something like this making a drastic difference in churches, in a small church. You know, I can tell you historically in my life, small churches have been very hard. The ones that I've worked for, worked with, the ones I've attended, it's been very hard to communicate because the vision's all stuck in one person's head. They're overwhelmed and they don't have the capacity to communicate or send out the emails or things. And so having that AI multiply that to communicate generally and to route specifically as needed, man, that's a whole other vision for me. I hadn't even gotten to that place yet. That's really cool.

Yeah, it's pretty much all, you know, small churches to medium to large churches that are using it and different ones. Like I got a small church that they're bilingual, so they love how their church members can come and speak in Spanish and then the AI can speak up to fifty plus languages, respond in their native tongue. Which is great also for like our, I know we got people who are doing missions like all over the world who are watching right now. They love that aspect and yeah, it helps. It helps both. They have different kinds of things that AI can really help in both of those situations.

So I mean, let's say this. I am very excited about what you're doing. The website is useful for a percentage of people. Getting it into an asynchronous community via API is going to be a big change, a big emphasis, a big opportunity for our people. And so we're going to help. We're going to work with Live AI in this season to try to figure out how to get it into asynchronous communities, into the API level. And we'll make it available for churches and others to benefit outside as well because it's not about hiding tools, but giving it. And so man, I love the work that you're doing here. This is just exciting. I know that there was some tools that we were going to talk about. You know, just looking at the time, we may not have too much time, but if you just want to highlight it, maybe share some of the URLs for the audience to dig into on the flip side, that might be a good thing just to wrap up here.

Yeah, would love to. So first thing I would love to share out is if you go to liveai.co/42, these are the forty-two questions that every church website should answer. And so this is whether or not you want to kind of help add these to your website FAQ or even just to help equip your team. Like I know a lot of leaders who are like, man, there's some questions that if my team answered this, I would be afraid of how they would answer it. You can use this to help train them. And again, you can train the AI on all these things. Things like, and by the way, this comes from, you know, like we said, those fifty thousand messages, the questions that people are asking, but also even some of the questions that some churches are answering on their website and most of them are not. But like, you know, where are you located? You know, that kind of needs to get answered. Or like, oh, do I need to give money during service? And so putting out here and like even answering like some deep questions like, you know, what happens if I doubt? You know, does that mean that I don't have enough faith? So being able to help like train your staff, but also you can just copy this. You can use this for yourself, but you also can just have your Live AI be trained on that right away. And I think it's just kind of cool too that it ended up being forty-two because as you know in the one movie, that's the answer of life, right? The meaning of life is forty-two.

Is it forty-two? I thought it was thirty-seven.

I never, I never. British humor. I don't get it. My daughter loves that stuff. I don't. So that's funny.

Yeah. One other real quick one too. If you go to liveai.co/on-resources, this is going to be open where you can paste in your YouTube URL and your YouTube transcript and it'll actually generate resources for you. Such as the summary of your sermon, five discussion questions, and this is all free, by the way. So you can go on there and you can do that, and you can also use this to help train your AI on basically the summary of your sermon's message.

And then lastly, just to make this available to everyone, if you go to liveai.co/digital-missionary, you can actually get an extended thirty-day free trial and also get ten percent off. So there's no risk at all. No credit card required. You can put it on your website, try it out, and you can also even schedule a demo. I'd love to meet with anybody watching this either right after this or even just schedule a demo if you're watching this in the future. Would love to just help answer all the questions you have about AI and ministry and that kind of stuff. So again, that's liveai.co/digital-missionary. Thirty-day extended free trial, ten percent off. That's a great deal.

And so Eric, man, thanks for jumping on the stream with us. Eric and Live AI, where it was a sponsor of the Digital Missionary Conference back in April, and excited to see him even with this offer here continue to support digital missionaries out there in the work they're doing globally. And you said I didn't ask this question earlier, fifty languages or so that your AI can speak naturally. And so it's a great opportunity even as we're obviously working with people at the global level. And so excited to see, I mean honestly straight up, I'm excited to see already what this beta looks like six to eight months into existence and really looking forward to what the future holds for Live AI and beyond. So man, Eric, thanks for jumping on the stream here as we're wrapping up. Any closing thoughts?

Yeah, just thanks for having me, Jeff. I'm a super big believer in what you guys are doing at Church Digital. So keep going. I'm with you guys in a way that I can collaborate and help be a part of this movement of helping the global church to do this. I am here all for it. And so yeah, consider me a resource not only to you, Jeff, but your team and anybody watching this. I would love to help anybody figure out how to reach the world digitally. And not just digitally, but you know, we got to have those physical things. As far as I can tell, we can't use AI to lay hands on people. And so that's the only other thing I could think that can't happen necessarily digitally. But so I just want to say I'm honored to have this conversation with you and to be here today. Love what you guys are doing.

I love it. Yeah, we're going to keep pushing the limits as far as we can digitally and excited to have tools like Live AI out there helping us as digital missionaries do what we're doing. And so for that, Eric, once again, thanks for jumping on the stream. But we're going to wrap. I have no idea when my next stream is going to be. Got to squeeze it in because I'm going on vacation next week. But until then, we're going to close for Eric. This with Live AI, this is Jeff with Church Digital. Thanks for hanging out with us today and we'll see you next time on the stream. You have a good one. Bye.